And one of them taking it, I am sorry to say, for a line of secular poetry, exclaimed at the stiffness and coldness.  Pica then put in her oar, and began to argue that honour must be earned, and that it was absurd and illogical to claim it for the mere accident of seniority or relationship.  Jane, not at all conscious of being an offender, howled at her that this was her horrible liberalism and neology, while Metelill asked what was become of loyalty.  “That depends on what you mean by it,” returned our girl graduate.  “Loi-AUTE, steadfastness to principle, is noble, but personal loyalty, to some mere puppet or the bush the crown hangs on, is a pernicious figment.”  Charley shouted that this was the No. 1 letter A point in Pie’s prize essay, and there the discussion ended, Isa only sighing to herself, “Ah, if I had any one to be loyal to!”

“How you would jockey them!” cried Charley, turning upon her so roughly that the tears came into her eyes; and I must have put on what you call my Government-house look, for Charley subsided instantly.

11.—­Here was a test as to this same obedience.  The pupils, who are by this time familiars of the party, had devised a boating and fishing expedition for all the enterprising, which was satisfactory to the elders because it was to include both the fathers.  Unluckily, however, this morning’s post brought a summons to Martyn and Mary to fulfil an engagement they have long made to meet an American professor at —–­, and they had to start off at eleven o’clock; and at the same time the Hollyford clergyman, an old fellow-curate of Horace Druce, sent a note imploring him to take a funeral.  So the voice of the seniors was for putting off the expedition, but the voice of the juniors was quite the other way.  The three families took different lines.  The Druces show obedience though not respect; they growled and grumbled horribly, but submitted, though with ill grace, to the explicit prohibition.  Non-interference is professedly Mary’s principle, but even she said, with entreaty veiled beneath the playfulness, when it was pleaded that two of the youths had oars at Cambridge, “Freshwater fish, my dears.  I wish you would wait for us!  I don’t want you to attend the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis.”  To which Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them.  Her father then chimed in, saying, “You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was with us yesterday.”

“Come, come, most illustrious,” said Pica good-humouredly, “I’m not going to encourage you to set up for nerves.  You are much better without them, and I must get some medusae.”

It ended with, “I beg you will not go without that old man,” the most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who maintains her right to judge for herself.  The ancient mariner had been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.